Risks of Penny Stock Trading

last updated 2017-07-09

Penny stock trading is a risky technique. The upside is large, but trading cheap stocks can lose you money!

The adage "buy low, sell high" is good advice, but there's nuance to it.
"Buy low" doesn't mean "buy the cheapest stocks possible". Similarly "sell
high" doesn't mean "wait for it to become the most expensive stock possible".
In securities, low and high are relative terms which refer to the underlying
value of the business itself: buy when it's undervalued and sell (if you must)
when it's overvalued.

Novice investors commonly look for extremely cheap stocks, figuring that a
stock selling for $1 has a lot more room to
double or quadruple than a stick which sells for $10. Novices commonly fall
into the trap of looking for penny stocks to buy. This is risky.

What is Penny Stock Trading?

Penny stock trading is a risky investment strategy that looks for very cheap
stocks and tries to exploit big changes in their prices. For example, a stock
that sells for $0.30 a share can make you a 25% profit if the price jumps
suddenly to $0.40 a share.

Penny stocks generally sell for less than five dollars per share and trade
outside of a major exchange. These stocks are cheap for a reason: they usually
belong to companies in bankruptcy or other financial troubles. These stocks are
popular in certain circles, but they're very risky. You might also hear them
referred to as microcap stocks or pink sheet stocks. It's all
the same thing. See the SEC's penny stock
rules for more detail (warning; regulatory language).

You can't buy and sell them as easily as a "normal" stock; you won't find
them on the NYSE or NASDAQ. You can buy or sell them through an online broker,
however—if you're willing to take on the risk. In theory you can sell a
penny stock at any time, but you have to find a willing buyer for the price.
Hold that thought in your mind for a moment.

These cheapest stocks may seem like a good value for your money. If you have
a thousand dollars, you can buy 7 shares of Boeing at $140 and 2000 shares of some random stock
selling for $0.50. Which would you rather have, seven shares or two thousand?
Psychologically speaking, it seems like it's easier for something selling for
fifty cents to go up to a $1 (doubling your money) than it is for Boeing to go
up to $280 (doubling your money).

The problem is that the value of a stock depends on two things.
First, its value is whatever someone's willing to pay for it. With millions of
shares changing hands every day, millions of people are judging what stocks are
worth. Two, the value of a stock depends on the value of the business behind
it. It's much better to own a company that's
making money than it is a company that's losing money. People are willing
to pay a little more for the privilege of owning part of a successful business
than they are to own part of a failing business.

Most of the time, a stock price below a dollar means that people think the
business is in trouble. Most of the time, they're right. Even if you've found
likely candidates, penny stock trading is one of the riskiest types of
investing. Ironically, sometimes the cheapest stock to buy may be the most
expensive stock to own—when you can't sell it for what you paid for
it.

Risky Companies Can Go Bankrupt

In
November 2011, American Airlines filed for bankruptcy. Its stock shed value
and dropped to pennies per share. "What a bargain," you might think. "For
pennies per share you get an airline, airplanes, fuel options, flight plans,
pilot contracts, and more!" Eventually American Airlines merged with US Airways
and the resulting entity has a stock back on a major exchange.

Yet that's one success story out of countless failures. Keep in mind that
one share of AAMRQ you bought at $0.25 doesn't necessarily equate to one share
of the new AAL at $30. In bankruptcy, anyone
with a claim on the assets of the bankrupt entity gets to negotiate on the
terms of their payment. As the holder of a share of common stock (if
you don't know what that means, you're definitely a holder of common stock)
you're at the lowest place on the list. You have almost no say in what happens
to the business's assets.

If the company is in so much financial trouble that there's no chance it'll
be able to pay off its debts, it may have to be broken up and have all of its
assets sold off to its creditors. You're not getting any money out of that.
You're not making 900 percent returns. Those 400 shares you bought at $0.25 per
share are worthless and you've lost all that money. That happens sometimes.

Struggling Companies and Buyouts May be Profitable

American Airlines didn't go out of business. Instead it merged with another
company. Sometimes that happens, or sometimes a stock gets bought out entirely
(as was the case with Orchard Hardware, which
Lowe's bought in late 2013). In that case, the
acquiring company will often make a bid for the troubled company, based on what
they think the company is really worth. That's probably the value of
the assets: real estate, inventory, existing contracts minus existing
liabilities.

In the case of an acquisition, the acquiring company may either pay existing
stockholders a fixed price per share or convert shares of the acquired stock
into shares of the new parent company at some ratio. (In other words, you might
get one share of AAL for every forty shares of American Airlines you held.)

Sometimes this is a good deal. Sometimes it's a fair deal. Any profit you
make depends on the price you paid. If it's below the acquisition price, you
might make a little profit. In this situation, timing is everything. You must
buy the stock for less than what it will sell for.

How do you know what it'll sell for? You have to figure out what the company
as a whole is worth—its inventory, any existing contracts, any
investments, the value of real estate, and the opportunity costs of
acquisition. That's a lot of financial analysis for a company that'll probably
go bankrupt.

Selling Penny Stocks is Difficult

Of course, to buy a stock at the right price, you have to find
someone to sell it to you at that price. That's not easy. Unlike a
normal stock, where people buy and sell based on actual value of what the
company can actually make, penny stock trading relies on speculation. Everyone
who owns the stock is waiting for it to turn around somehow. Maybe you'll get
lucky and someone who bought it for $0.20 a share is willing to unload a few
thousand shares at $0.25 a share, but it's more likely that anyone who bought
it wants to make 10 or 20 or 50 times profits.

The same goes for getting out of a stock. Sure, you bought it at $0.25 a
share and good news has raised it to $0.50 a share, and you think you're as
lucky as you're ever going to get, but are there enough buyers at $0.50 a share
for you to sell all of your shares?

Penny stocks have very little liquidity.
There aren't many buyers and sellers because they're so risky. Unlike
a share of Coca-Cola stock you can buy or sell
pretty much anytime near the asking price, there aren't enough buyers and
sellers who agree on prices, so their prices have wild swings. You're going to
have to have great timing and even better luck to sell at the price you had in
mind. That's after you've gone through all of the hoops in buying these shares in the first
place.

Sure, you can wait for the company to turn around—but most don't. Most
don't get acquired. Most go out of business.

Day trading penny stocks will be frustrating when that lack of liquidity
works against you. If you're at all ethical—if you're not defrauding
other people with pump and dump scams—you're relying on luck, and
luck is a poor investment strategy. As well, patience works against
you. You have to race around the clock before these poor companies go out of
business altogether. That "hot penny stock tip" you just saw in email? That's
someone's desperation trying to trick you into buying what he really really
wants to sell.

You can generally buy microcaps through any reputable stock broker, though
you'll likely have to sign a disclaimer that you understand the risk of
smallcap trading. In shadier corners of the Internet, you can find businesses
which purport to specialize in these trades, but trust may be an issue. Any
reputable stock broker will have to run you through several pieces of paperwork
to ensure that you understand the risks of this type of investing.

Is Penny Stock Trading Worth It?

Before you hit the buy button on your penny stock trade, keep in mind
several risks!

Their companies are often in bankruptcy. It's very difficult to find the
fair valuation of a business in financial trouble, so you don't know the right
price to pay. You're also a creditor probably last in line for liquidation, so
if everything goes wrong and the stock goes out of business, you might lose all
of your money (or get ten cents on the dollar).

Turning around a troubled company takes time. You have to be patient. Good
returns are rare, and they're smaller than you might think. Turning a company
losing millions of dollars a year into a company making millions is a lot of
work!

It's difficult to buy and sell penny stocks for good prices. You don't even
know what the right price is or the right price will be. You're competing with
a lot of other people trying to outsmart each other.

Finally, many of the people promoting these stocks are
really making money from convincing you to subscribe to a penny
stocks newsletter. If there's a really great underpriced stock, would
you want other people to swoop in and buy it and drive up the price?
Maybe—if you want to sell it to them at inflated prices! It's
especially insidious when you have to pay to subscribe to this hot penny
stock newsletter. You're giving someone money to market their worthless
stocks to you!

Characteristics of the Best Penny Stocks

If good penny stocks are out there for the taking, they'll all have several
characteristics. The best penny stocks:

... represent companies with real assets, so there's
business value in the companies themselves.

... have a well understood business plan, so there's a
path to making money in the future.

... have a strong market liquidity, so you can buy and
sell without too much hassle or time.

... have a turnaround plan, whether an acquisition,
bailout, or improved business conditions.

The latter is the most important, as there's no point in buying a stock
that's about to go out of business.

Don't fall for the hype. Making money by investing is a matter of time and
patience and looking for true value—buying good businesses. You never
need to pay anything besides discount broker commissions. No secretive broker
will help you get wealthy with cheap stocks. Successful investors aren't day
trading penny stocks. No hot cheap stock lets you make incredible money in a
week; anyone who tells you otherwise is gambling.